Underage drinking

Warning over underage drinking as Junior Cert results due

PARENTS and publicans are being warned to be extra-vigilant in preventing under-age drinking as Junior Cert students prepare to celebrate their exam results.
Information packs on alcohol and drugs are being distributed to students' parents and vintners in Killarney, Co Kerry, coinciding with the release next week of the exam results.
The pack - on its way to parents this week - asks them to be "aware" and "awake". It also asks publicans and their staff to be extra-vigilant at this time, reminding them that the legal age for the purchase of alcohol is 18.
The aim of the pack was to reduce the use of alcohol and drugs at the time of the Junior Certificate results, the covering letter outlines. Those receiving the packs are issued with counselling phone numbers and parents are also asked to examine their own attitude to alcohol.
The idea of the information pack and the role of the organisation was not to be authoritarian but "to give young people the freedom to say no" until they were older and could make mature decisions about alcohol, Tom Doherty, committee chairman said.
Mr Doherty expressed regret that attempts to set up a 'No Name' alcohol-free club for teenagers in Killarney over the past 18 months had not yet borne fruit. In fact, there was only one 'No Name' club in Co Kerry and that was in Tarbert, he said.
Set up by the town council in 1999, the anti-alcohol and drugs-abuse organisation, which targets young people, now involves the gardai, youth groups and community organisations as well as schools and has a mobile 'life -education' unit, serving rural as well as urban areas.

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